Police Investigate Notes People Kept Finding on Mirrors, Discover Woman Who Was Being Held Captive
A woman who alleges she was being held against her will left desperate notes in two public bathrooms in her effort to be freed.
The notes began a chain of events that later led Scott Township, Pennsylvania, police to arrest a man on a variety of charges related to sexual abuse and imprisonment, according to WTAE-FM.
The woman, whose name was withheld, told police she had been kept a prisoner since May 1, according to KDKA-TV.
More than two months later, on July 8, she made her first bid to alert authorities that she needed help.
Employees of a Walmart store in Carnegie contacted police after they found a handwritten note stuck to the mirror of a women’s bathroom. The note gave the woman’s name, said she was being held against her will and assaulted, and gave an address where she was being held.
The note told police this was not a prank.
The same day, police went to the address provided, which was the home of a man identified as Corey Brewer. According to a criminal complaint, no one answered the door. The responding officers said they heard furniture moving inside, but had no warrant and could not conduct a forced entry, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
On July 9, police — who had interacted with Brewer in a separate matter, the nature of which police did not disclose — called Brewer on his cell phone.
Brewer allowed police to speak to the woman, but only on speaker phone, saying he wanted to hear what was being said.
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The woman then told police she was Brewer’s girlfriend, and that they were vacationing in New York, the complaint said.
The very next day, a second note was found in a public restroom near the Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater museum, which is located in Mill Run, Pennsylvania.
The note said that the woman who wrote it heard police during their July 8 visit to Booker’s home, but could do nothing. She said the abuse against her had not stopped and that she did not author some texts sent to her family. She also asked officers not to give up on helping her.
“If I don’t make it, tell my family I love them,” the note read.
Police reviewed security video from Fallingwater, and found footage of the woman going into the restroom with Brewer nearby.
On July 11, after having learned from the woman’s ex-boyfriend, with whom she shares two children, that he had not heard from her since April and had officially reported her missing, police raided the apartment where Brewer lived and arrested Brewer, the Post-Gazette reported.
“According to the complaint, that man [the woman’s ex-boyfriend] said the woman and Mr. Brewer had a current relationship. Police then confirmed the woman had filed for a protection from abuse order against Mr. Brewer last August, but it had expired in September, the complaint said,” the outlet added.
The woman said she was raped, punched, stabbed and had clumps of her hair cut off. She said she was threatened with death if she attempted to leave. A criminal complaint said she had cuts and bruises when she was discovered.
Brewer faces charges of sexual assault, strangulation, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, terroristic threats, unlawful restraint and simple assault. He was freed after posting bail, according to the Post-Gazette.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
